It’s the night of April 4, 1968.  A 9 (and almost 1/2) year old boy is watching a program on a black and white television set in his home in the mid-town area of Memphis, Tennessee.  Suddenly, the screen changes to the Civil Defense logo and he hears a voice saying:

Will all members of the National Guard please report to the Armory and all police and fire personnel please report to their stations.

Normal programming resumed.  Then, all of the sudden, or so it seemed, President Lyndon Baines Johnson came on the television saying:

I come to you tonight with a heavy heart…

And everything changed.

Back to the present…

A white former transit officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter yesterday in the shooting death of an unarmed black man on an Oakland train platform.  That 2009 encounter set off days of rioting in the racially polarized city.

Prosecutors had sought  a murder conviction for Johannes Mehserle in the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was shot as he lay face-down.

Mehserle was handcuffed and led away after the verdict. He faced his family and mouthed, “I love you, guys.”  His parents cried when the verdict was delivered.  Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, stared at the jurors and appeared upset.

As the jurors were polled on their decision, one female juror wiped away her tears with a tissue

Police in riot gear were deployed on the streets of Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

A crowd gathered near Oakland City Hall moaned  and cussed in disappointment as they heard the verdict.   A dozen people formed a semicircle to pray.

 Amber Royal, 23, of Oakland commented:

It’s not real, it’s not real. Where’s the justice? He was killed in cold blood.

Grant family attorney John Burris said the family was “extremely disappointed”.

Burris said:

This verdict is not a true representation of what happened to Oscar Grant and what happened to him that night. This was not a voluntary manslaughter case.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put out a statement urging Californians to remain calm and not resort to violence.  Schwarzenegger informed Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums the state was well prepared to assist in maintaining order.

The jury had to make a choice between murder and lesser charges of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

The jury consisted of eight women and four men.   There were no black jurors.   Seven were white, three were Latino, and one was Asian-Pacific. One declined to state their race. They were escorted from the courthouse under tight security.

Involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence of two to four years. The next hearing was set for Aug. 6.

The New Year’s Day incident was videotaped by at least five bystanders.  It turned into one of the most racially polarizing cases in California since four Los Angeles officers were acquitted in 1992 in the beating of Rodney King.

The trial lasted three weeks during which prosecutors played videos by bystanders, and witnesses gave their testimonies about hearing the frightening gunshot that killed Grant.

28-year-old Mehserle testified that he struggled with Grant and saw him digging in his pocket as officers responded to reports of a fight at a train station.   Afraid that Grant may have a weapon, Mehserle said he moved to shock Grant with his Taser but pulled his .40-caliber handgun instead.

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney David Stein’s closing argument was that Mehserle let his emotions get the better of him and intended to shoot Grant with the handgun without justification.

Jackie Bryson, one of Grant’s friends,  testified that Mehserle said “(expletive) this” before he fired the fatal shot.

Defense attorney Michael Rains painted the shooting as a tragic accident. Rains argued Mehserle had no motive to shoot Grant, even though he was resisting arrest.

Rains also said Mehserle told one of the other transit policemen before the shooting: “Tony, Tony, Tony, I can’t get his hands. I’m going to tase him.”

Mehserle pleaded not guilty to murder.  He resigned from the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency after the shooting.

Fallout from the shooting arrived quickly in Oakland after the videos were shown on television and the Internet. The shooting itself and the fact that it took nearly two weeks to arrest Mehserle, caused a horrendous riot in the city.  Downtown businesses were damaged, cars were set ablaze and clashes erupted between protesters and police.

Grant had recently been released from jail   He had been sentenced to 16 months for a gun possession charge.  During his arrest, he ran from police and was subdued by an officer with a stun gun.

Grant became a martyr of sorts in a city where more than a third of residents are black. His image has been painted on buildings and storefront windows just like that of slain hometown rapper Tupac Shakur.

Grant’s family and friends have filed multimillion dollar lawsuits against the transit agency.  Only the mother of Grant’s daughter has reached a settlement.

Peaceful protests changed to violence after the sun went down as some people looted stores, smashed car windows, and threw powerful fireworks at police and lighting fires in trash cans.

Hundreds of police made more than 50 arrests, but they expected that number could double.

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts proclaimed in a televised news conference:.

This city is not the wild, wild West.  This city will not tolerate this activity.

In a related story…

In a move designed to pander to a possible Democrat Hispanic voting base,  The United States Department of Justice, under the leadership of  President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and Attorney General Eric Holder, filed a lawsuit on yesterday against the state of  Arizona designed to throw out the state’s immigration law and keep other states from getting tough on illegal immigration.

According to the DOJ, the law, due to take effect July 29, interferes with the federal government’s “pre-eminent authority” under the Constitution to regulate immigration.

Translation:  How dare you do the job that we are neglecting.

The ill-advised filing sets the stage for a titanic grudge match, played out in federal court, over Arizona’s right to protect its’ citizen.   At the same time, politicians in some other states have said that they want to pass tough illegal immigration laws as well.

The Justice Department previously declared that the Arizona law will “cause the detention and harassment of authorized visitors, immigrants and citizens who do not have or carry identification documents” while ignoring “humanitarian concerns” and harming diplomatic relations.

The Arizona law states that  police can question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally, and it makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. People may be only be questioned about their status if they’ve been stopped by police who are in the process of enforcing another law.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer called the lawsuit “a terribly bad decision” and defended the law as “reasonable and constitutional.”

Arizona was forced to pass the measure after years of trying to deal with the crime of illegal immigration, including the wonderful perks it brings of drug trafficking, kidnappings and murders. Arizona is the biggest gateway into the U.S. for illegal immigration, and has been invaded by an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants.

Other states have said they want to pass similar laws to Arizona, so the  government is using that threat to their policy of neglect as another reason for bringing the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit:

The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.

The DOJ’s case hinges on the  assertion that the Arizona law pre-empts federal laws. The lawsuit says that federal laws already on the books cover illegal immigration and that those statutes take precedent. 

They would, if they were enforced.  Say, here’s an idea, Scooter.  Why don’t you file lawsuits against those who are really defying Federal Law:  the Sactuary Cities?

The lawsuit reads:

In our constitutional system, the federal government has pre-eminent authority to regulate immigration matters.  This authority derives from the United States Constitution and numerous acts of Congress. The nation’s immigration laws reflect a careful and considered balance of national law enforcement, foreign relations, and humanitarian interests.

The lawsuit also claims that the Arizona law will impose a huge burden on U.S. agencies in charge of enforcing immigration laws, “diverting resources and attention from the dangerous aliens who the federal government targets as its top enforcement priority.”

Now the case has to be assigned a judge.  That individual will decide whether or not to grant a preliminary injunction, in favor of the United States Government, to temporarily block the Arizona law from taking effect.

Gov. Jan Brewer believes  that her state’s law will survive the Obama administration lawsuit as well as pending suits that were previously filed by private groups and individuals.

Per Governor Brewer:

As a direct result of failed and inconsistent federal enforcement, Arizona is under attack from violent Mexican drug and immigrant smuggling cartels. Now, Arizona is under attack in federal court from President Obama and his Department of Justice.  Today’s filing is nothing more than a massive waste of taxpayer funds.

That seems to be the modus operandi of this administration, Governor.

Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, who spearheaded the bill co-sponsored by dozens of fellow Republican legislators, condemned the lawsuit as “absolute insult to the rule of law” as well as to Arizona and its residents.

The lawsuit will have repercussions beyond Arizona as the courts render judgement on the balance of power between the states and the federal government and politicians try to deal with the hot button issue of illegal immigration in a crucial election year.

Fearing for their political lives, three Democratic members of Congress in Arizona pleaded with the Obama administration not to bring the suit in a year when they face tough re-election battles. On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain is being raked over the coals for his earlier promotion of comprehensive immigration reform by challenger J.D. Hayworth, which McCain has since given up in favor of a message to “complete the danged fence.”

The Mexican government applauded the move, saying the law “affects the civil and human rights of thousands of Mexicans.”

As opposed to American Citizens.

What civil and human rights?  The right to enter our sovereign nation illegally? 

To wrap up today’s blog, I refer you back to a rant from my post Illegality, Not Civil Rights.  This is an answer to a comment by a young man named Benito, who claimed to be a member of a pro-ilegal immigration group, perhaps here illegally himself:

What makes the current influx of illegal immigrants exempt from the rules and regulations that every other generation of immigrants to this country had to abide by in order to become legal citizens of the greatest nation in the world? By being here illegally, they are not entitled to the same rights as natural-born or naturalized American citizens. They are like someone who breaks into someone’s home, does their dishes, cuts their yard, cleans their house, and then helps themselves to their food and drives their car without asking.  This is in no way a human rights issue. Freedom is God-given. And with freedom comes responsibility. With citizenship comes responsibility, like paying taxes and making your own way.

Once again, the man who is supposed to be America’s president seems to be concerned with the well-being of everyone but Americans.  Regardless of the outcome in the federal courts, the president will pay a heavy price, politically, for ignoring the will of the American people.

May God protect and preserve our country.

Sources:  yahoo.com, drudgereport.com

An Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.

With this preamble, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created by Congress and the president on October 1, 1958.  NASA’s birth was directly related to national defense.  The United States and the Soviet Union were in the middle of the Cold War. During this period, space exploration emerged as a major area of competition and became known as the space race.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, appointed by President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm), said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.   Huh?

What in the world does “improving relations with the Muslims” have to do with exploring space?   Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him.   (I’m shocked.)  According to Bolden, better interaction with the Muslim world will ultimately advance space travel.  

Going up into space and getting blown to bits are two entirely different things, Director.

According to Bolden:

When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.

Because kissing up to the Muslim world has worked so well thus far for Scooter and his administration, hasn’t it?

Bolden was in the Middle East last month celebrating the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered the previously alluded to address to the Muslim world in Cairo.  The NASA Director spoke in June at the American University in Cairo.  During his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an “international” collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.  

Because as his boss has told the world over and over again,  American exceptionalism is a bad thing.

Bolden said:

It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations).   

Bolden used the International Space Station as an example, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.

Of course,  Bolden denied the suggestion that he was on a diplomatic mission   According to Bolden, he was there in a distinctly non-diplomatic role. 

He said:

Not at all. It’s not a diplomatic anything. 

Bolden verbally destroyed all of NASA’s accomplishments over the last 52 years by saying that the United States  will no longer travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.  

What a defeatist administration.

Bolden caught a lot of criticism this year for being the boss of NASA during the cancellation of the agency’s Constellation program, which was in the process of building new rockets and spaceships that would return American astronauts to the moon.  Re-itering the adminstration’s theme of  the importance of “international” cooperation in future missions, Bolden told Al Jazeera that the moon, Mars and asteroids are still planned destinations for NASA. 

Just not as an American mission.

By turning NASA into a Muslim Outreach Project, Obama and his administration are not only backhanding a part of American Exceptionalism that little boys grew up dreaming about being a part of, but they are also sabotaging Americans’ day-to-day lives by limiting the fount of  technology that has contributed mightily to our country’s health, education, and way of life.  Here are a few of the technological marvels that came directly from NASA:

The political destruction of NASA’s original mission by the president and his administration dishonors the memory of all the brave men and women who died heroically trying to reach the stars.   Furthermore, this action illuminates this administration’s disbelief in American exceptionalism and their contempt for the institutions that truly spotlight it. 

One large slap to Americans, one giant step backwards for mankind.

Sources:  foxnews.com, suite101.com, nasa.gov

The Republican Party seems poised to have the greatest victory in November’s Mid-term National Elections since General Custer said, “Hey.  Would you look at all those Indians?”

That is, if their own “Beltway Squishiness” does not turn the whole country against them.

“Squish” is a term given by Conservatives to those who claim to be a Reagan Conservative, but whose actions reveal them to be at best ambivalent, and, at worst, Liberal imposters. For instance, like a certain noted national politician, popular in the Northeast, who is a Reagan Conservative one day, and a nanny-stater the next.  But, hey, he does have very nice hair.

Take the curious case of the Republican National Chairman, Michael Steele.  Known for his seemingly Conservative punditry on Fox News, the former Maryland Lt. Governor gained his present position on January 31, 2009, after 6 contentious rounds of voting within the leadership of the party.

While he campaigned for the position, Steele tried to negate suspicions that he was too moderate to lead the party because he came from a Democrat-controlled state.  He was also a former member of the Republican Leadership Council, a group that sought to curb the influence of “social”  conservatives in the party.

The race for the chairmanship came down to a choice on the final ballot between Steele and Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman who secured strong support from party insiders after former RNC leader Mike Duncan dropped out of the race earlier in the day.   

Steele won on the sixth ballot, winning 91 votes to Dawson’s 77.

Since becoming chairman, Steel has been the face of the Republican Party, garnering more time on camera than the politicians of the political party he chairs, much to their irritation.

The first week of this year, Michael Steel went out on a tour to promote his new book, “Right Now:  A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda”.

 GOP lawmakers were so mad over Steele’s pronouncements on his book tour, including a prediction that Republicans will not win back the House and Senate in 2010 ( that was very supportive), that they had their aides give his aides a dressing down on a conference call.

One of Steele’s aides said at the time:

You really just have to get him to stop.  It’s too much.

Another aide said Steele was on “a Republican apology tour at the exact wrong time.” Yet another called Steele “unprepared and unknowledgeable” in interviews.  Steele’s camp says they had little control over his statements, as publicity for his book was handled by an outside firm, but were happy to report that he had softened his doom-and-gloom rhetoric. “Not this year” was spun into “playing to win.”

And now, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele finds himself under seige, trying to cope with the fallout over the holiday weekend concerning his clueless remarks claiming Afghanistan is a “war of Obama’s choosing,” which the United States never really “wanted to engage in.” 

Conservative pundits and GOP politicians were united on the Sunday talk shows in their condemnation of Steele’s remarks.  The politicians feverishly tried to distance themselves from the Republican Chairman by emphasizing their support for the escalating U.S. military campaign in the country while lambasting Steele for his “uninformed” statement.   Some said he should resign, one senator demanded and apologize to our Armed Forces, and at least one local GOP official wants to challenge Steele for his position.

This was the biggest backlash by his own party that Steele has ever experienced.  He has a reputation for going off script on touchy issues.   While he has lasted this long in his position and while Steele downplayed the backlash in a public statement Friday, behind the scenes he was actively trying to get all the support from GOP insiders that he could. 

One of the earliest to call for Steele’s head, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the GOP chairman called him on Saturday to “persuade me that the remarks were taken out of context.” Kristol did not believe him, though he said they had a “long conversation” on the topic.  I bet.

Kristol said:

He’s a good guy.  He should be … a pundit on a million TV shows and he should give speeches. But he shouldn’t express the views he expressed as Republican chairman .  One thing as a Republican I think Republicans can be proud of is that we don’t politicize foreign wars. … And unfortunately, Michael Steele politicized this in a way that doesn’t reflect the view of the huge majority of Republicans. I think it would be better if he went. 

But hey, Mike, don’t worry.  You have a well-known political figure in your corner:  Ron Paul (R-Tex), perennial Presidential also-ran, isolationist extraordinaire, and favorite of tin-foil hat wearers everywhere, opined:

I would like to congratulate Michael Steele for his leadership on one of the most important issues of today. He is absolutely right: Afghanistan is now Obama’s war. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was out in front in insisting that more troops be sent to Afghanistan. Obama called for expanding the war even as he pretended to be a peace candidate.Michael Steele should not resign. Smart policies make smart politics. He is guiding the party in the right direction and we are on the verge of victory this fall. Chairman Steele should not back off. He is giving the country, especially young people, hope as he speaks truth about this war.

I have to ask myself, what is the agenda of the harsh critics demanding this resignation? Why do they support Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s war?

The American people are sick and tired spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year, draining our economy and straining our military. Michael Steele has it right and Republicans should stick by him.

Now, doesn’t that make you feel better, Mike?  Custer had the support of his Indian Scouts, and you have the support of Ron Paul.  What could go wrong?

Republicans had better get their collective act together immediately.  They are poised to make bigger political gains in both the Senate and the House than in the Mid-term Elections that brought us Newt Gingrich and the “Contract With America”.    Their choice is plain and simple:  run as Reagan Conservatives or embrace the squishiness that cost them the Presidency.

Sources:  foxnews.com, cnn.com, huffingtonpost.com

Today is the day our country celebrates it’s independence.  Thomas Jefferson wrote a document in 1776, declaring our defiance against tyranny, affirming our yearning to be free, and proclaiming our choice to be a sovereign nation,  in control of our own destiny.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

 Compare and contrast:  President Barack Hussein Obama  (mm mmm mmmm) speaking on September 23, 2009:

America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 – more than at any point in human history – the interests of nations and peoples are shared. No longer do we have the luxury of indulging our differences to the exclusion of the work that we must do together.

If we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we are not living up to that responsibility. In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.

America will keep our end of the bargain. I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult. That is why the days when America dragged its feet on this issue are over. Now is the time for all of us to do our part. We have reached a pivotal moment. The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation ….

 John Quicy Adams, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1825 –  

Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the recent election, which have resulted in affording me the opportunity of addressing you at this time. You have heard the exposition of the principles which will direct me in the fulfillment of the high and solemn trust imposed upon me in this station. Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence. Intentions upright and pure, a heart devoted to the welfare of our country, and the unceasing application of all the faculties allotted to me to her service are all the pledges that I can give for the faithful performance of the arduous duties I am to undertake. To the guidance of the legislative councils, to the assistance of the executive and subordinate departments, to the friendly cooperation of the respective State governments, to the candid and liberal support of the people so far as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that “except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain,” with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country. 

In the summer of 1976, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday showed everyone how the overwhelming majority of Americans feel about our country:

Happy 4th of July, Americans.  God bless America, land that I love.

Sources:   famousquotes.me.uk, archives.gov, legalinsurrection.com, youtube.com

In the summer of 1988, while still at Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) landed a job as an intern in the Chicago office of the influential law firm of Sidley Austin. ( How does a first-year law student get an internship at such a prestigious law firm?)  He was dating Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer from a working-class family in the South Shore area of the South Side.  She also just happened to be his mentor at the firm. The lovebirds got married in 1990, and settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side along the lakefront.  Built around the University of Chicago, both black and white  affluent families lived among the middle class and the poor.  Hyde Park boasts a strong base of independent voters who are committed to political reform, which influenced Obama’s political message. 

He worked for seven months in 1992 on a voter registration and education project that helped elect Bill Clinton as president and Carol Moseley Braun as the state’s first African-American female senator.  

You may have heard of it:  Project Vote.   In 2008,  Project Vote and ACORN were responsible for a voter registration drive targeting battleground states Obama needed to win the White House.

Though officially non-partisan, the ACORN/Project Vote voter drive focused on groups that they thought would vote Democratic in the presidential contest: African-American, young, Latino and low-income earners.  They referred to these groups as “historically underrepresented in elections” in a press release they issued, in an attempt to justify what they were doing.

ACORN/Project Vote operated voter registration drives in 21 states in 2008; including the battlegrounds Colorado, Florida, Michigan (since move to Obama) Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  They were very instrumental in Obama’s victory.

Also in 1992, Scooter went to work for Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a firm specializing in civil rights law and other forms of public advocacy.   Working there provided him with the opportunity to make many contacts in the Chicago Political Machine.   The longtime fire he had in his gut concerning a political career found inspiration through the changes being made in Chicago by Harold Washington, its black mayor.   African-Americans were finally getting the power and control that they hadn’t had before, and Obama decided that politics was the career for him. 

Obama started another part-time gig in 1992.  Per the University of Chicago:

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. 

Why didn’t they just call him a Part-time Lecturer?

In 1995  “Bomber” Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn hosted a fund-raiser for Obama prior to Obama’s run for Alice Palmer’s seat in the state Senate  and Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s upcoming state Senate campaign.

In 1996 at age 34, he ran for the state Senate in dubious campaign that is barely known of, outside of Chicago.   Alice Palmer, the incumbent, had decided to run for Congress and supported Obama as her successor.   But after Palmer’s congressional campaign ran into trouble, she changed her mind and decided to run for re-election to the Illinois Senate after all. Obama refused to step aside and the melee ensued.  One of Scooter’s volunteers challenged whether Palmer’s nominating petitions were even legal.  Obama’s campaign pulled the same chicanery concerning the petitions of other candidates.  Palmer dropped out, and the other candidates were disqualified.   So,  Obama won unopposed in the Democratic primary—guaranteeing his victory in the general election.  This was truly an example of Chicago-style politics at it’s finest…or dirtiest.

Around this same time, at a Bill Clinton White House event, philanthropist Walter Annenberg announced that he was making a $500 million grant to cities across the nation to put towards the reform of public schools.   Bill Ayers was the head of the Chicago group that, with$49.2 million in hand,   formed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  The launch party in 1995 was attended by the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago, as well as anybody was influential among the Chicago Political Elite.   Guess who the  first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was?  You guessed.   Obama held the post until 1999.  At that time, he stepped down and remained on the board.   Bill Ayers worked closely with the Challenge as a leader of the newly formed Chicago School Reform Collaborative. 

 They also both served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago from 1999 to 2002.   Just a “guy from the neighborhood”.  Huh, Scooter?

Additionally, Scooter served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002.  This foundation started as the financial back-up plan of a widow whose family had made millions in the lumber industry.

After her death, it was run by philanthropic people who increasingly dedicated their giving to Liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.  It has grown over the years until it is now bigger than the TIDES Foundation and actually funds it.

The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the capital outlay to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, believe it or not, air.

What a coincidence, that, as president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities, huh?

While he served in the State Senate in Springfield, Illinois, Obama wrote more than 40 columns for his neighborhood Newspaper, The Hyde Park Herald.  He also received extensive coverage in the Chicago Defender, an over-one hundred year old newspaper of record serving Chicago’s black community.

Per Howard Kurtz, writing for weeklystandard.com, from an article published August 11-18, 2008:

What they [the newspaper articles] portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign. As details of Obama’s early political career emerge into the light, his associations with such radical figures as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn look less like peculiar instances of personal misjudgment and more like intentional political partnerships. At his core, in other words, the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan. Elected president, this man would presumably shift the country sharply to the left on all the key issues of the day-culture-war issues included. It’s no wonder Obama has passed over his Springfield years in relative silence.

You’re a prophet, Mr. Kurtz.

Obama remained in the Illinois State Senate until 2004, when he became the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate seat from Illinois.   We’ll examine this period of his life tomorrow, as we finish this series.

Sources:  usnews.com, suntimes.com, uchicago.edu, michellemalkin.com, pajamasmedia.com, weeklystandard.com

Like several parts of Barack Hussein Obama’s (mm mmm mmmm) life story, little is known about his college experience.  He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia in 1981.  The move receives a small mention in Mr. Obama’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father”.   Instead, he devoted that chapter to his impressions of race and class struggles in New York.  I’m shocked.

An article in Columbia College Today, a publication of the university, reported that Scooter portrayed Columbia as a period of buckling down following a troubled adolescence.   Obama said that he did not socialize much, instead spending a lot of time in the library, “like a monk.”  Yeah, right.  He has also said that he was involved to some extent with the Black Students Organization.

Federal law limits the information that Columbia can release about Scooter’s time there. A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that  Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science.   He did not receive honors and specific information on his grades is sealed.   A program from the 1983 graduation ceremony lists him as a graduate.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that Obama studied, while at Columbia, under the late Edward Said, an Arafat devotee. That alone really does not mean a whole lot.  Said was a popular professor and hundreds of students took his comparative literature courses.   However, Scooter evidently maintained some sort of tie with Said.   A photo that made the Internet rounds before the election shows Obama talking to the professor at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together.

Said knew a lot of radical operatives.   Among those radicals were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  When they emerged from wherever they were hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers enrolled in education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights.  He then earned his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987.  Said liked Ayers so much, he wrote a paragraph for the dust jacket of the bomber’s 2001 book, Fugitive Days, in which Ayers brags about being a part of the Weather Underground.

From 1985 – 1988, Obama was a Community Organizer in Chicago.  What does a Community Organizer do?  I’m glad you asked.

Per Byron York in an article found at nationalreview.com:

Community organizing is most identified with the left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909-72), who pretty much defined the profession. In his classic book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote that a successful organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.” Once such hostilities were “whipped up to a fighting pitch,” Alinsky continued, the organizer steered his group toward confrontation, in the form of picketing, demonstrating, and general hell-raising.

Obama was hired by Jerry Kellman, a New Yorker who had gotten into organizing in the 1960s.  Kellman was trying to help laid-off factory workers on the far South Side of Chicago, in a nearly 100% black community.   He led a group, the Calumet Community Religious Conference, that had been created by several local Catholic churches in the industrial community.   Kellman was advised to hire a black organizer for a new spinoff from CCRC.  They called it the Developing Communities Project, designed to focus solely on the Chicago part of the area.

One of Obama’s projects while he was there, was to try to build an alliance of white and black churches and enlist them in the cause of social justice.  Obama had a problem, though.   He didn’t go to church himself.   And that, brothers and sisters, is how Obama, drawn to the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and a political opportunity), joined Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street.

If you ask Obama’s fellow Community Organizers what his most significant accomplishments were, they’ll say two things: the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects.   Those  were his biggest victories.

So, after 3 years of Community Organizing, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School at the age of 27.  The question is:  How did he get the money for this?  In my article Why Haven’t I Heard of Khalid Al-Monsour? ,  I attempt to answer that question:

President Obama attended Harvard Law School from 1988 – 1991.  The average tuition during that time was $25,000 per year.  It would have cost $75,000 to attend there for 3 years.  As president of the Harvard Law Review, he received no stipend from the school, according to Harvard spokesman Mike Armini in a interview with Newsmax.

If numbers cited by the Obama Presidential Campaign for Scooter”s student loans are accurate, that means that Obama came up with more than $32,000 over three years from sources other than loans to pay for tuition, room and board.  Hmmmmm.

Along with the funding issue, very little is known about Obama’s time at Harvard Law School,and his sycophants in the Liberal hierarchy, Main Stream Media,  and even Harvard Law School Administrators have done a remarkable job in running interference against anyone trying to find out about it.

From Jodi Kantor’s article at nytimes.com:

He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.

During his time at Harvard, Obama met and started dating Michelle Robinson, the future First Lady.  I don’t know if he was attracted to her arms or not.

He also managed to get himself elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Bruce Spiva, a former review editor who now practices civil rights law in Washington, said that the law review is:

fairly disconnected from the breadth and the rough and tumble of real politics.  It’s an election among a closed group. It’s more like electing a pope.

As the president of the review, Scooter had to walk a delicate line. He served on the board of the Black Law Students Association, often speaking passionately about the hot topic of the week, but in a way that would not make white classmates defensive.   He kept away from fiery rhetoric.  He even did a spot-on impersonation of the Rev. Jesse Jackson when he came to speak on campus, according to Franklin Amanat, now a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.  Obama’s  brashest public speaking moment came at a rally for faculty diversity, where he compared Professor Derrick Bell, who had resigned after agitating for greater faculty diversity,  to Rosa Parks.

Most of the time, young Scooter stayed away from the fiery rhetoric of campus debate, choosing safer topics for his speeches. At the black law students’ annual conference, he fervently told students to remember the obligations that came with their privileged education.

Barack Hussein Obama graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard Law School.  We don’t know anything about his actual courses or grades.   The records have been sealed.

Now, law degree in hand, Obama was ready to return to the Windy City. 

During this period of Barack Hussein Obama’s (peace be upon him) life, we see the seeds planted during his childhood and teen-age years start to take root and grow into a full-fledged, Alinsky-inspired Socialist ideology.

In tomorrow’s blog, we’ll explore his adventures among the Chicago Liberal and Academic Elite and the path that led him to his first political campaign.

Sources:  nysun.com, nationalreview.com, nytimes.com